amuckart

I'm trying to get my 441 clone to have an accurate stitch length and sew in the same holes backwards and forwards. It only does this for some lengths. I understand how to make the adjustment, but I'm curious as to what the correct position for the stitch length lever is at the zero point. Should the middle of the lever align with the mark, or should the top of the lever? The lever is pretty chunky and imprecise but I'd like to be able to accurately set a specific stitch length so I can pattern things so the stitches end up exactly at the corners. This also applies to the max stitch length end, what part of the bar should align with the 11mm mark? Is this correct Or this: Thanks.

I can't speak for Tor, but that's what I was asking about. The Ferdco machines had this part and they are described in the patents which I squirrelled out a while ago and listed in this post http://leatherworker.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=41581&p=259182 The patents were filed in 1993 and have lapsed, so my hope is that the other clone manufacturers will now start making and supplying these parts. Thanks.

I would also love to get a copy of this manual. Thank you.

Can you clarify what you mean by needle guide, is it a part under the needle plate that replaces the feed dog like in the Ferdco patents? If it is, where did you get it? Thanks.

Watch this video and see how many different machines get used for different operations https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkvFBF4xT3o

Hi Korokan, I think it's worth saying up-front that it's really great that you're asking these questions. Industrial machinery is a whole different world with different rules that aren't obvious until you've been there and seen them. That's because what the factory is doing is wholesaling industrial machinery and industrial machinery shipped wholesale comes with a completely different set of expectations than single-machine retail. You wouldn't by a CNC bridge mill from alibaba and expect it to unbox it and just have it work. You'd expect to have to install it, level it, set it up, calibrate it, integrate it with your design workflow etc. etc. etc. Industrial sewing machines are just like that, except that most people don't have expectations of CNC mills that come from having a small domestic model that they can take out of the box and have Just Work (not that that wouldn't be awesome, mind you!). The other thing about industrial sewing machines is that by and large they get set up to do one thing, and they do that one thing day in day out until they're completely worn out. Factories that need more than one type of seam sewn that requires a different weight or colour of thread, or a different length stitch, will buy a separate machine to do each thing, because doing that is cheaper than interrupting workflow to reconfigure a machine. You can see this in the depressing videos of Chinese jeans factories. That's where small single-maker shops are different, for someone producing bespoke goods in limited numbers an extra machine represents a significant outlay, and if you've only got one machine operator, the time lost reconfiguring the machine is comparatively small. Even so, most folks will have two or three industrial machines of different types for different work. Factories that employ tens or hundreds of these machines have in-house mechanics whose full time job is looking after them. They guy who starts the narration of this great video about Puritan machines does nothing but service them for the shoe factory that uses them. Puritan machines haven't been made new for years now. The dealers do ask for samples, and do do extensive testing of the machines before they order lots of them and put their brand on them and part of their process with that is working out how much work they need to put in to set the machine up and get it sewing properly for the work the customer wants to do with it, whether they can get the factory to manufacture the right sort of feet and plates and so on, and what the quality control coming out of the factory is like (it varies hugely from factory to factory). Something that isn't obvious at all to folks who learn about 441 machines from this forum is that they were never designed as heavy leather stitchers. They're designed for heavy textile work, sewing things like cargo parachutes and harnesses. There are even ones that are specifically set up to sew cloth polishing wheels. They were first set up to sew leather by Ferdco, and the guy who founded that company patented some of the modifications that are required. That was about 20 years ago. To set up a 441 to sew leather you have to swap out the feed dogs, needle plate and presser feet, you also have to set it up for thick thread, make sure you're using properly aligned leather point needles, and power it with a low-speed high-torque motor. I hope that helps a bit.

Yes, that's exactly what I mean. Out of the box it had been assembled, but that's it. It wasn't timed and the feed was out of sync.

Your No.6 will do pretty much anything in leather that a Cobra 4 will do unless you're running into the limits of the throat depth (in which case a Campbell Randall will be worse) or you need to sew right up at the edge of funny shaped things that can only be done on a cylinder arm machine. I had a No.6 and I regret letting it go.

I bought a machine direct from China. It was a Hightex brand, which is what Cowboy machines are called outside of the US. The short version is this: If you are buying this for use in a business, buy one from a local well-respected shop who will set it up and support & service it. Buying direct from China is a Bad Idea if you need the machine up, running, and making money in a specific timeframe. For me, as a reasonably mechanically competent amateur who has torn down and re-built other machines, it was worthwhile. The cost was around half of what it would have cost me to get a machine from Cowboy or Cobra shipped to New Zealand, but if I were in the USA it is not something I would consider. I bought via a reseller here, so as a private individual not a business I had the benefit of NZ's strong consumer protection laws if it went wrong, but even so It was almost 5 months before I had all the parts I needed. Because of screw-ups with the shipping I didn't get the correct motor and speed reducer with the machine and it took ages for them to arrive. It took me a full day to clean the shipping grease off, assemble the stand and table and get the machine mounted and oiled. There were no instructions at all, and the assembly of the table was non-obvious (which is to say that the holes drilled in it matched neither the machine nor the stand, and I ended up building a new table). After that it took me many hours to get the machine timed, feeding properly, sewing in the same holes in reverse that it did forwards, and so on. I was lucky, my machine wasn't missing any bits, came with all the feet I needed, and didn't require a total teardown and rebuild like the Hightex 441 another NZer on this forum bought. Even without any major things going wrong with my machine mechanically, I would have been completely screwed without the Juki 441 engineer's manual. Even with that it was tricky getting the machine set up because the timing marks the Juki manual references don't exist on my machine. If you're comfortable with tearing down and re-building walking foot sewing machines and you know how to time them from scratch and you have the time and tools to do so, then getting a machine direct from China can work, but it's a gamble. You can't count on getting any kind of support from the factory, and as Wiz has pointed out getting the additional harness feet is expensive and they aren't guaranteed to fit the specific machine you end up with.

Bob Kovar at Toledo Industrial probably has, or knows where to find, what you need.

G'day, I'm glad you found the manual useful. Yes I think you did buy some post beds from me. I hope they worked out Ok for you. You can get 331LR needles in size 230 only, from Sewing Supplies in Auckland. I dealt with them by email and they were always really great. Do you have photos of your machine?

Is it the top thread pulling the bottom thread up, or the bottom thread pulling the top thread down? If your thread path is Ok, and your tension on the top is working Ok, it might be the bobbin winder or bottom tension. If your bobbin thread isn't wound absolutely consistently you could be having issues where the tension is 'spiking' due to uneven wind.

Yep, I'm coming to realise that the threads in this machine are a bit special. That really surprises me because I figured that at the point where you're cloning a machine it would just be easier to use a common thread standard instead of having to replicate whatever weird ones the original manufacturer used. For that matter I'm a bit surprised that a late 20th century machine still uses all those weird threads. I've got a parts list for the TSC-441 and it's a mix of metric and imperial and god knows what.

Thanks Bob. I guess I was hoping that since it's 2013, not 1913, that the screws were an actual standard standard. I was aware that Singer screws were almost all weird and proprietary but that's not universal in sewing machines - my Seiko and Pfaff machines seem to have standard threads in the various holes they have. I'll just drill out the three holes I want to mount things on and put metric helicoils in them. It'll be easier than finding a source for Juki screws just to build a sensible table mounting. Cheers.

Can anyone tell me what thread standard is used throughout the Cowboy 4500? There are various tapped holes on the machine that are neither M6 nor 1/4" and it's driving me nuts trying to figure out what sort of machine screw I need for them. Thanks.

Excellent find. I am intensely envious :-) It's not a No.6 and it doesn't look like the No.2 I have. It also doesn't look anything like the No.4 in the catalogue that was posted on here a while ago, so I'm not sure. If you look at the parts they should have part numbers and a model abbreviation cast into them - the No.6 parts all have "HM6" for example. That should tell you what it is.

Adam, who made that one? Thanks.

It's getting powdercoated gloss black, then I'll pinstripe it. I'm still toying with whether or not to get the main balance wheel stripped or not. There's a reasonable amount of the original decoration on it, and I'm toying with having it stripped and redone by a professional signwriter.

Here's a view of a Pearson No.6 Harness Machine that most folks won't have seen before. It's off to the powdercoater tomorrow.

Sorry man, I haven't been on here for ages. I've just emailed it to you.

Gudelon is pretty much the coolest project ever, and high on my list of places I really really want to visit as a reenactor. Given what I know of the people involved, and my experiences of doing medieval reenactment for the last 13 or so years, I'd say that there are likely to be two main reasons they're using modern harness: firstly that there's almost no concrete information on what 12th-13th century harness looks/works like; and secondly that modern harness is probably far better for the animals they're using. There are also issues that you can't really find 12th-century equivalent horses any more, modern horse breeds are quite different. It's an anachronism, but it's a second-order effect for the work they're doing, i.e. it doesn't have a direct impact on the outcome of the build the way, say, using power tools instead of medieval stonemason's tools would. The only resource I'm aware of that's easily available is the Museum of London book The Medieval Horse and its Equipment.

Pfaff made a variant of their model 35 machine that has reverse. I have one, but I've never tried to put any high-shank feet on it so I don't know if they fit or not. They also made a non-reversing version with a lower wheel feed rather than a drop feed.

This is interesting to me as there are a couple of 3-phase clicking presses nearby. What sort of HP rating do the motors in them usually have? I know nothing at all about the inner workings of clicking presses.

I've seen others use small French edgers for this kind of thing.

Thank you both. So far I haven't needed binder clips, the contact adhesive I'm using is more than strong enough. The difficulty I'm having is in getting the gusse to form neatly. How much sewing allowance do you leave on the gusset, I.e. how big is the turned out lip? Thanks.